It was nine thirty in the morning, and Callie Torres was making breakfast for herself, her son Joey, and Mark Sloan. She kept glancing at the door as Joey sat in the middle of the living room floor making his hot wheels cars run in to the leg of the coffee table and making explosion noises whenever they did. Finally, the front door opened.
"Daddy!" Joey leapt from the floor and ran at Mark as though he hadn't seen his father in ages. The reality was he'd been over until Joey went to bed the night before. Callie couldn't blame him. Mark was a fantastic dad, and he proved it by grabbing Joey in a bear hug and swinging him in a full circle before setting him down again.
"Hey buddy, why don't you go get dressed? I have to talk to your mom for a minute."
Joey took off in the direction of his room, leaving Mark and Callie alone in the kitchen.
"You're late." Callie said, more with amusement than irritation.
"I overslept. Listen, I think it's time we had the talk with him."
Callie looked at Mark like he was crazy and shook her head slightly before responding, "He just turned nine years old. What talk are you planning on giving him, the best way to make his GI Joes battle each other?"
"Torres, this is serious. We need to talk to him about sex."
"Did you get the part where I told you he just turned nine?"
"Come on, look at who his father is!"
Callie finally looked up from the bacon she was in the midst of cooking and saw something in Mark's eyes that almost resembled desperation. There had to be a reason for the weirdness and she was going to find out what it was.
"I get that you're kind of a man whore, but why does it have to be now? How old were you when your parents gave you the sex talk?"
"I didn't have one."
That statement caught Callie's attention. She stared at him in shock for a full minute before he sat down in the nearest chair and explained.
"My parents weren't around, you know that. I spent my entire childhood playing over at Shepherd's. His parents were good to me but they didn't think it was their job to talk to me about that. My parents set me up with a nanny who was there when they left town, but she didn't speak any English. When I was ten I saw this movie on tv and I got curious, so when I was at Derek's the next day I asked his sister about it and she said she'd show me. Derek walked in and saw what we were doing and ran off screaming to mommy and daddy. They called my parents, and my parents had the Spanish-speaking nanny give me the talk. I didn't understand a word of it. Then-"
Callie held her hand up. "Wait, your nanny spoke Spanish?"
Mark looked at her, a bit confused. "Yeah. Why?"
"Are you sure it was a sex talk she gave you?"
"Of course. I remember every word of it. She was in the kitchen and she was very stern. And then she made me jello to get rid of the awkward tension."
Callie burst in to uncontrollable laughter. "Mark, she didn't give you a sex talk. She said the recipe for lime jello out loud!"
A look of horror came over Mark's face as he said with an accusing tone, "Are you trying to tell me that every time I tried to talk dirty to you I was giving you a jello recipe and you never told me?"
"Yes! It was too funny and you were so in to it and it all makes sense now!" Callie was rolling on the floor in laughter until the smoke alarm went off.
"Damn it, you burned the bacon. Can I finish my story now?"
"Yeah, yeah. What happened after you got the jello talk?"
I made it all the way to middle school without very many other mishaps, but then I met Lizzy. She was beautiful—" Callie glared at him. "Well, as beautiful as a thirteen year old boy can find a thirteen year old girl. I watched a bunch of movies and they all said that if you like a girl you should sleep with her, so I did. And now here I am."
"So, what you're trying to tell me is you think if you don't talk to Joey before he starts experimenting with Meredith's daughter, he's going to become a man whore just like you and get his heart broken by a girl half his age and then end up having a child with his bisexual best friend before even getting the chance to tell her he actually likes her?"
Mark grinned at her. Even though she was being sarcastic, he was happy she remembered to add the fact that he actually did admit to having feelings for her eventually. Granted, it was long after Arizona split and Lexie found her happiness with a younger Mercy West doctor, but he'd realized it nonetheless.
"Mark, stop daydreaming. You can talk to him if you want. But leave out all the gory details about how it works and protection and all that. Tell him it's a lot of fun and he shouldn't experiment with anybody until he's married."
"But we're not married."
"He's nine. We can lie to him for another four years before he starts catching on."
Mark grinned again and kissed Callie's forehead. "I'll see you at work, Torres."